And I do not believe
that they are deeply interesting to an uncritical reader. He reads
them to pass the time; and, to judge from the magazines
themselves, gives his more serious attention to the "write-ups" of
politics, current events, new discoveries, and men in the public
eye,--to reality, in other words, written as if it were fiction,
and more interesting than the fiction that accompanies it,
because, in spite of its enlivening garb, it is guaranteed by
writer and editor to be true. I am not impressed by the perfervid
letters published by the editor in praise of somebody's story as a
"soul-cure," or the greatest of the decade. They were written, I
suppose, but they are not typical. They do not insult the
intelligence as do the ridiculous puffs which it is now the
fashion to place like a sickly limelight at the head of a story;
but they do not convince me of the story's success with the
public. Actually, men and women, discussing these magazines,
seldom speak of the stories. They have been interested,--in a
measure. The "formula," as I shall show later, is bound to get
that result. But they have dismissed the characters and forgotten
the plots.
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